Dina Temple-Raston

Life changed as Sadiik Yusuf knew it about two years ago, when the FBI appeared at his front door in Minneapolis to tell him his son Abdullahi had been stopped at the airport, suspected of trying to board a flight that would take him to Syria to fight with ISIS.

Danny Nolan was the first man to swing a wrecking ball in Manhattan in 25 years. Wrecking balls hadn't been allowed on the island for a very simple reason: The buildings are much too close together to allow a huge ball to swing back and forth.

An exception was made for Nolan because he, and the other construction workers of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 14, were "working the pile" — hauling away what was left in the World Trade Center towers after the Sept. 11 attacks.

President Obama has said this appears to be a terrorist attack, and NPR's counterterrorism correspondent Dina Temple-Raston is with us. She has been talking with investigators and law enforcement officials in the U.S. and France. Hi, Dina.

The man who fatally shot five police officers in Dallas may have had plans for a wider attack, the city's police chief said Sunday. Dallas Police Chief David Brown provided new details about the tense two-hour standoff that police had with the gunman before he was killed.

"We're convinced that this suspect had other plans," Brown told CNN, adding that the shooter "thought that what he was doing was righteous and believed that he was going to target law enforcement and make us pay for what he sees as law enforcement's efforts to punish people of color."

NPR has obtained what investigators believe could be the Dallas gunman's manifesto. It appeared underneath a photo of the man on social media. And for more on that, we turn to NPR's Dina Temple-Raston. Hi, Dina.

Local jihadists first began disappearing from Russia and the North Caucasus region just months before the opening ceremonies for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. In some cases, human rights groups say, Russian security forces tracked the militants down and dumped their bodies on the side of the road as a warning.

Police in Orlando Florida say 50 people were killed when a gunman began shooting in a popular nightclub. When he took hostages, that's when the SWAT team went in. The gunman was killed, but not before perpetrating the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.

All eyes were on 20-year-old Abdullahi Yusuf when he stepped on the stand in federal court last week in Minneapolis to testify for the prosecution in America's largest ISIS recruitment trial.

As Yusuf began to speak, his words provided a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how more than a dozen young men convinced themselves that the way to prove they were good Muslims was to travel to Syria and fight for ISIS.

In a Minneapolis federal courtroom, three Somali-Americans are on trial for allegedly plotting to join the Islamic State in a case that's expected to offer the most detailed public accounts yet of how the extremist group recruited nearly a dozen young men from the Twin Cities.

A 20-year-old Eagan, Minn., man could become the second person to enter the country's only jihadi rehab program.

Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy to provide material support to the Islamic State, and while he awaits sentencing, three sources familiar with the case tell NPR that he is likely to join a defendant named Abdullahi Yusuf in the emerging de-radicalization program in the Twin Cities.

When 30-year-old Edward Archer opened fire on a Philadelphia policeman earlier this month, he quickly offered authorities a motive: He told them he had done it for the Islamic State.

"He pledges his allegiance to the Islamic State," Capt. James Clark of the Philadelphia Police Department told reporters hours after the Jan. 7 shooting. "He follows Allah and that is the reason he was called upon to do this."

The FBI, for its part, has said it is investigating the attack as a possible act of terrorism — inspired by ISIS.